The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1887-05-12

them in albums and portfolios. God speed
the good pictures on their way with
ministries of knowledge and mercyl
But what shall say o, the prostitution
of this art to purposes of iniquity. These
death warrants of the soul are at every
street corner. They smite the vision Of
the young man with pollution. Many a
young man buying copy has bought his
eternal discontinue. There may be
enough poison in one bad picture to poison
one soul, and that soul may poison ten,
and ten fifty. and the fifty hundreds. and
the hundreds thousands, until nothing bui
the measuring line of eternity can tell the
height, the depth, and ghastliness, and
horror of the great undoing. The work OF
death that the wicked author does in a
whole book the bad engraver may do on
half side of pictorial. Under the guise
of pure mirth, the young man buys one OF
these sheets. He unrolls it before his
comrades amid roars of laughter, but long
after the paper is gone the result may per-
haps be seen in the blasted imaginations
of those who saw it, The queen of death
holds banquet every night, and these
periodicals are the printed invitations to
her guests. Alas that the fair brow of
American art should be blotched with this
plague spot, and that philanthropists,
bothering themselves about smaller evils,
should lift up no united and vehement
voice against this great calamityi
Young man, buy not this moral strych.
nine for your SOUL Pick not up this nest
of coiled adders for your pocket Patron
ize no news stand that keeps them Have
your room bright with good engravinRs:
but for these outrageous pictorials have
not one wall, not one bureau, not one
pocket. A man is no better than the
picture he loves to look at. If your eyes
are not pure your heart cannot be. At
news stand one can guess the character OF
q man by the kind of pictorial he pur-
chases. When the devil fails to get man
to read bad book he sometimes succeeds
in getting him to look at bad picture
When satan goes a fishing he does NOT
, care whether it is long line or q short
line, if he only draws his victim in, Be-
| ware of lascivious pictorials, young man
in the name of Almighty God l charge
you.
If / have this morning successfully laid
down any principles by which you may
| Judge in regard TO books and newspapers,
! then l have done something of which
shall not be ashamed on the day which
shall try every mans work of what sort
| it is.
Cherish good books and newspapers.
Beware of the bad ones. One column
nav save YOUR soul; one paragraph may
ruin it. Benjamin Franklin said that the
reading of Cotton Mathers Essay on Do
! ing Good" nodded his entire life. The as
sassin of Lord Russell declared that he
was led into crime by reading one vivid
| romance. The consecrated John Angel
: James, than whom England never pro-
! duced a better man, declared in his old
| days that he had never vet got over the
! evil effects of having for fifteen minutes
| once read bad book. But need not go
! so far off. 1 could come near home and
! tell YOU of something that occurred in my
, college days. could tell you of COM
rade who was great-hearted, noble, and
! generous. He was studying for an
| honorable profession, but he had an
infdel book in his trunk, and he said
to me one day "De Witt, would you
like to read it?" said: "Yes, l
! would" | took the book and read it for
, only a few minutes. was really startled
| with what saw there, and | handed the
book back to him and said: "You had
better destroy that book" No, he kept it.
He read it. He reread it. After q while
he gave up religion as a myth. He gave
| up God as nonentity. He gave up the
Bible as a fable. He gave up the church
| of Christ as a useless institution. He
gave up good morals as being unneceB-
sarily stringent. have heard of him but
twice in many years. The time before the
last l heard of him he was confirmed
inebriate, The last heard of him he was
coming out of an insane asylum-in body,
mind, and soul an awful wreck. I believe
that one infdel book killed him for two
worlds.
Go home to-day and look through your
library, and then, having looked through
your library, look on the stand where you
keep your pictorials and newspapers, and
apply the Christian princi, les l have laid
down this morning If there is anything
in your home that cannot stand the test, do
not give it away, for it might spoil an
immortal soul; do not sell it, for the money
you get would be the price of blood, but
rather kindle fire on your kitchen hearth
or in your back yard and then drop the
poison in it, and keep stirring the blaze
until from preface to appendix there shall
not be a single paragraph left, and the
bonfire in Brooklyn shall be as consuming
as that one in the streets of EphesuS.